“This is a marathon. This is not a sprint,” said Meredith McGehee, the policy director at the Campaign Legal Center. “If people aren’t prepared to be in this battle for a long time, then they will be frustrated.”

“Our system is falling apart,” she continued, noting that the public understands that money is having a corrupting influence on politics.

People, she said, realize that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

“This is no way to run a democracy,” added congressional observer Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

A decade ago, Ornstein helped draft the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, often called McCain-Feingold after its chief Senate sponsors, which attempted to reign in special interest spending.

Last year, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the McCain-Feingold rule that prohibited corporate money from being spent on issue ads that mention candidates — legally known as “electioneering communications” — in its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. The same opinion also granted corporations the ability to use their treasury funds to expressly advocate for or against federal candidates, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act had not allowed unlimited contributions to be used to fund either issue ads or advertisements that expressly advocate for or against candidates, which are legally known as “independent expenditures.”

“This is a radical Supreme Court decision, and we need to pursue every avenue possible to reign in the damage,” said Craig Holman, the chief lobbyist for the advocacy group Public Citizen.

The damage, according to Holman, includes huge political expenditures by special interest groups, a growing lack of information about who are actually funding political advertisements and a “grave” impact on the legislative process, in which lawmakers and congressional staffers are unable to say no to K Street lobbyists out of fear that corporate interests will spend massive amounts against them.

As the Center for Responsive Politics has documented, outside groups spent a combined $304 million on electioneering communications, independent expenditures and communication costs during the 2010 election cycle. Despite the fact that outside spending is usually down during a midterm election compared to a presidential election, that sum rivaled the amount spent during the 2008 election cycle, when outside groups spent $301 million on such expenditures.

During the 2010 election cycle, Holman noted, we saw a concentration of resources at the top, among outside spending groups: That is, half of all outside spending came from 10 groups.

Indeed, according to the Center’s research, the top 15 outside organizations that spent the most on political ads during the 2010 election cycle accounted for two-thirds of such all spending by non-party committees. And only four of these groups fully disclosed their donors.

Rank

Organization

2010 Spending

Viewpoint

Donor Disclosure?

1

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

$32,851,997

Conservative

None

2

American Action Network

$26,088,031

Conservative

None

3

American Crossroads

$21,553,277

Conservative

Full

4

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies

$17,122,446

Conservative

None

5

Service Employees International Union

$15,952,331

Liberal

Partial

6

AFSCME

$13,185,800

Liberal

Full

7

National Education Association

$10,245,561

Liberal

Partial

8

American Future Fund

$9,599,806

Conservative

None

9

Americans for Job Security

$8,991,209

Conservative

None

10

National Association of Realtors

$8,890,737

Nonpartisan

Partial

11

National Rifle Association

$8,351,636

Conservative

Partial

12

Club for Growth

$8,240,060

Conservative

Full

13

60 Plus Association

$7,096,125

Conservative

None

14

America’s Families First Action Fund

$5,878,743

Liberal

Full

15

League of Conservation Voters

$5,496,070

Liberal

Partial

Holman suggested that new legislation, new government regulations and even a Constitutional amendment could be used to shine a light on the spending.

But, first and foremost, Holman said, “We need President [Barack] Obama to step up to the plate and sign an [executive] order requiring enhanced political disclosure for contractors.”

An executive order, Holman said, is the “only way of getting new disclosure” prior to Election Day next year.

And, in the meantime, Ornstein noted, member of Congress, who fear deep-pocketed attacks against them, will be spending every free moment they have dialing for dollars for their own campaign war chests.

And super PACs — which are legally allowed to collect unlimited donations and then advocate for or against candidates — will keep springing up on all sides of the political spectrum.

“We have a brave, new world out there that is a troubling one,” Ornstein said.

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